


The Slopes of Vesuvius

by Pippin



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Exy, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shit goes down, and Jeremy, jean learns to love himself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 08:39:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin/pseuds/Pippin
Summary: I took pretty much everything that Jean said was done to him from Nora's asks.  She also said that she did not give an exclusive list, so I took some license.





	The Slopes of Vesuvius

**Author's Note:**

> I took pretty much everything that Jean said was done to him from Nora's asks. She also said that she did not give an exclusive list, so I took some license.

_“Live in danger.  Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius.”  —Friedrich Nietzsche_

The court of the USC Trojans was light and airy, filled with those who shone so brightly, smiles ablaze and happiness overflowing.  At the center of it all was the sun himself, Jeremy Knox.  Blond, constantly alight with joy and radiance and sheer goodwill, shining more than anyone else around him.

Jean felt like a mar on the court.  He did not come from a star-studded sky but rather from the black hole of Castle Evermore, a place that sucked in all light and never let it escape.  Red and gold was nothing like black and red, and the 3 on his cheek stood out in sharp relief.  The meaning was so different here than it had been in the Nest.  There, it had been both a blessing and a curse.  He had been Riko’s property and had suffered accordingly, but, unlike others, he was only allowed to be touched with Riko’s express permission.  Here, however, his tattoo was a curse.  It reminded the world who he was and where he had come from, and maybe they didn’t know the true meaning, but they knew enough.  Especially with Neil Josten running his mouth out in South Carolina, dragging Kevin along with him.

A ball bounced lightly off Jean’s feet, dragging him out of his rapidly spiraling thoughts.  He looked up and immediately recoiled back.  Jeremy was grinning, but Riko had done the same many times, sometimes—often—even smiling through Jean’s screams.

Jeremy took a few quick steps back as he realized his mistake.  His smile only faltered for a moment, but it was enough.  Jean had seen it—he had fucked up.

“I’m sorry,” he said hurriedly, as if apologizing had ever done him any good.  As if apologizing served as anything other than a brief spot of amusement for Riko while he did whatever the hell he wanted to Jean anyway.

Jeremy’s face fell.  “No,” he said, sounding…heartbroken?  “You didn’t do anything.  It’s not your fault.”  He glanced around quickly, making sure that no other Trojans were anywhere near them.  “My older sister was in an abusive relationship for a while, right?  Well, she acted near the same as you.  You were abused, Jean.  It’s not your fault that someone did this to you.  It couldn’t have been your parents, not with you being at Evermore all the time.  Did they know?”

Jean flinched harder.  His parents were the last things he wanted to think about.  Some part of him, some part locked away from Riko and all his torture, was still angry.  Riko may have declawed the furious cat Tetsuji had likened Jean to when he was freshly arrived at Evermore from France, but he still had fangs.

Two backliners slammed into the wall near them and the crash resonated in Jean’s head.  As if a dam had broken, his tolerance for noise went straight out the damn window, every little thing having him shaking and flinching away.

“Do you trust me?” Jeremy asked, seemingly out of nowhere. 

Jean frowned.  Of course he trusted Jeremy.  He trusted Jeremy more than anyone else in his life, although that really wasn’t saying much.  After a moment, he nodded.

“Then come on.  You’re in no shape to practice.  Let’s get you back to the dorms, yeah?’

“I can practice,” Jean protested.  He’d never been allowed to skip practice, even for things much more severe than a little bit of noise sensitivity.

“Bullshit,” Jeremy said, sounding as though he was fighting to keep his voice upbeat and steady.  “Can or not is irrelevant.  You _shouldn’t_ practice.  Come on.”

Although Jean thought—hoped—it wasn’t intentional, Jeremy used the same inflection as Riko always had when he said _come on_.  It had Jean following him in a heartbeat.

Coach was more than agreeable to letting Jeremy and Jean leave practice.  He had, thus far, shown no sign of using anywhere near the same methods Tetsuji Moriyama had to keep his players in line, though Jean was, subconsciously, waiting for the other shoe to fall.  It was only a matter of time.

Jean changed quickly, leaving on his thin white undershirt.  He wore it at all times, not wanting to have to answer questions about what had left the scars crossing his torso.

Jeremy dragged Jean back to the athletes’ dorm past the room Jean shared with a sophomore backliner, and to his own.  Jeremy, through a combination of his captaincy and an uneven number of men on the exy team, had swung a single room.  It was straddling the line between neat and messy—there weren’t any clothes on the floor, but they were in a semi-organized pile on the spare bed.  Jeremy’s exy bag was on the floor, only half-packed, and his schoolwork and textbooks made a messy heap on his desk.  It was a sharp contrast to both Jean’s roommate, who couldn’t be bothered to pick up his side of the room if his life depended on it, and Jean himself, who had learned perfect neatness at the oftentimes cruel hands of the Ravens.

Jeremy gestured at his unmade bed.  “Sit,” he instructed as he did so himself.

Jean’s skin crawled—being on a bed with another man had never boded well for him—but he obeyed Jeremy.

“Jean,” Jeremy said softly, turning to face him.  “Who hurt you?”

Jean ducked his head, avoiding Jeremy’s gaze.  In response, Jeremy tucked one finger under Jean’s chin and pulled his face back up.

“We can help you,” he promised.  “I _want_ to help you.  You’re never going to get better closing yourself off and keeping it all inside.  Sooner or later, that’s going to come back to haunt you.  You don’t have to talk to me, but you do have to talk to someone.  We can find you a therapist?”

Jean shook his head hard.  He didn’t want to let anyone new into his life.  Not yet.  The Trojans were already pushing his boundaries, albeit unwittingly.

“The Ravens did everything in pairs,” he said quietly.  “I don’t like being alone.”

Jeremy frowned.  “You’re roomies with Aidan, aren’t you?”

“He has a girlfriend,” Jean replied.  “He’s out a lot.  Being in the room alone feels wrong, but it’s not like I have an option.  I don’t like being in the room at all, but I have nowhere else to go.”

Jeremy’s brow wrinkled.  “You could move in here,” he suggested.

“No, no, you have your own room, your own space,” Jean protested.

“I really don’t mind,” Jeremy replied.  “Honestly, it’s more important to me that you feel comfortable and safe here than anything.  Whoever hurt you, he’s never going to touch you again.  I’ll—we’ll—keep you safe.  He won’t hurt you again.”

“He can’t,” Jean said with a small laugh.  As if the Trojans could have ever protected Jean from Riko.  “He’s dead.”  As soon as the last consonant left his lips Jean knew he had said too much.  Jeremy’s face gave it all away.

“ _Riko_ hurt you?  Is that how he ran his team?”

Jean laughed again.  “All this started long before Riko was captain of the Ravens.”

Jeremy’s face betrayed his confusion.  “You were in the same year as Riko and Kevin, and Riko was given the captaincy as a freshman.  You wouldn’t have been at Edgar Allen before Riko was captain.”

 _Oh, Jeremy_ , Jean thought and took a deep breath.  Jeremy cared so much, too much for Jean’s comfort.  It was time to lay out some truths to scare him back a bit.

“You asked about my parents.” 

Jeremy’s eyes went wide at that.  “They hurt you first?”

Jean shook his head.  “No, they knew better than that.  They were—are, I guess—human traffickers in Marseilles, back in France.  They knew they could make money off their children, but an injured or broken child fetches less money than a happy and healthy one.  As such, my sister and I had good childhoods.  But then they owed more money to Kengo Moriyama than they could ever hope to repay, and Tetsuji offered them an out—he paid their debt, but it didn’t come free.  It came at the price of their son.”

“They sold you?” Jeremy demanded.

Jean shrugged, burying the old anger that rose at that reminder.  “It was business.”

“You are a _human being_ ,” Jeremy snapped back.

“Not according to them, I wasn’t.  I was property, a toy for Riko to build and work his cruelty out on.”  Jean held his hands out in the space between them.  A few of his fingers kinked in odd directions, a few had lumps of incorrectly healed bone.  “Six broken fingers.  They weren’t exy injuries.  Riko broke three of them—also Kevin’s hand, while we’re on the topic.  The other three, well, he told me to break myself.  How I said I could still practice, earlier?  Broken fingers were no excuse for missing practice.  There was no excuse for missing practice.”

Jeremy looked furious and Jean automatically scrambled away from him.  A furious captain, alone, in a closed room?  Jean did not have a good history with that.

“Jean.”  Jeremy’s voice was low, soft, gentle.  “I’m not mad at you.  I couldn’t be mad at you.  Not for this.  Not for being hurt and being _strong_.  You survived, remember?  Riko is dead.  He was weak and he couldn’t take the idea of losing and he shot himself in the head.  But you are here, and alive, and safe.  And we have you.  _I have you._ ”  He rested his hands on Jean’s shoulders cautiously, waiting for Jean to flinch.  He didn’t.  “The Ravens were—hell.  The investigation into them?  I can see why you’re so broken.  Add Riko’s abuse to all of that, and _no wonder_ you are the way you are.  But the Trojans—we’re not like that.  We’re a family, and families keep each other safe.”

“Once they know I’m here,” Jean’s voice was no more than a whisper, a broken breath, “they’re going to come for all of you.  You saw what Edgar Allen _fans_ did to Palmetto when Kevin turned up there.  I know the Trojans’ roster isn’t out yet, but once it is and they see my name on it you’re going to face hell.  You said the Ravens were hell?  They’re going to bring that hell down on you.”

“We’re not giving up on you,” Jeremy insisted again.  “You’re one of us now.  We’ll fight back.  Spirit Award be damned.”  One corner of his mouth quirked up at that, an obvious attempt to bring some small measure of levity back into the conversation.

“It’s not as easy as broken fingers,” Jean protested.  “Yes, Riko is dead, but that removes his protection.”

“ _Protection?_ ”

Jean jabbed a finger at the tattoo on his cheek.  “Everyone bought into Riko’s _Perfect Court_ bullshit.  The numbers don’t mean shit with regards to exy.  They mark Riko’s property.”  He took a deep breath.  “That meant that Riko could do anything he wanted, but also that no one else was allowed to do anything unless Riko told them to.  They couldn’t even ask.  So yes, protection.”

Jeremy took a deep breath.  “You also said it wasn’t as easy as broken fingers.  What the hell else did he do to you, Jean?”

Jean bit his lip, fidgeting with the zipper on his USC hoodie.  After a moment of consideration, he pulled off the hoodie, then his undershirt.  Jeremy’s eyes went huge at the scars that marked Jean’s torso.

“I sewed a lot of these up myself,” Jean said quietly.  “The ones I couldn’t get to I bribed Kevin to do for me.”

He pulled his undershirt back on, glancing at Jeremy’s face as he reached for his hoodie.  Jeremy was pale—he probably hadn’t believed this sort of thing happened outside of movies.

“Was that the worst of it?” Jeremy asked quietly.

Jean considered.  “No.  The worst _physically_ was the waterboarding.  But the absolute worst was the rape.”

Jeremy looked sick.  “He raped you?”

Jean snorted.  “Hell no.  Riko would never stoop so low so as to do anything homosexual himself.  Many of the other Ravens were less discerning.  Any warm, tight place to put their dick in was good enough.  I was sixteen, the first time.  Riko chose a senior backliner.  I had marks from his fingers for days.  I fought, at first.  But then I learned.”

“This happened more than once?”  Jeremy’s voice was soft and cracking, as if he was going to cry.

“Five times,” Jean confirmed.  “I fought the first four.  But the fifth I gave up, and then it wasn’t fun for Riko anymore.”

A stray tear slipped down Jeremy’s cheek, and Jean stared.  He couldn’t understand why anyone would cry for him.  He was nothing, a piece of meat to be used and abused.  And he was sure that soon Ravens fans would be coming for the Trojans—surely Jeremy had more important things to worry about than a stray and broken backliner.

“You’re safe now,” Jeremy promised, reaching for Jean and carefully folding him into a loose embrace.  “You’re safe now.”

**Author's Note:**

> For Az.


End file.
